1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally electronic display devices, and more particularly to a semitransparent display using a cholesteric liquid crystal display layer, with which a person can see an object beneath the display while the display is active.
2. Background Art
Portable electronic devices are becoming ever more popular. It seems as though everyone today has a mobile telephone. Additionally, other electronic devices such as portable computers, portable gaming devices, multimedia or music players, navigation devices, and the like are becoming more prevalent.
Advances in technology have made these devices more convenient to use. Reductions in overall size, for example, allow a mobile telephone to fit in a shirt pocket. Advances in processing power permit complex computational tasks to be performed in a palm-sized computer. Advances in networking technology permit gaming devices to connect to the Internet. Touch sensitive screens permit users to navigate the features of a mobile telephone or palm computer without a conventional keypad.
Sometimes, however, certain advances come with tradeoffs. Take, for instance, the touch sensitive screen. While touch sensitive screens are convenient in that many different displays can be presented to a user, user interaction efficiency can actually be reduced due to the fact that the user's finger or hand is often covering the display itself. Consider this example: In a palm-sized touch sensitive device, multiple icons are presented upon the display from which a user may make a feature selection. Once a feature—such as a music player, camera, or phone—is selected, the user may begin to use the feature by selecting various controls from a series of menus and so forth. Each time the user makes a motion to select an icon or menu or control, they must move at least a finger—and more often a portion of their hand—over the display. As such, they may temporarily lose visibility of 10%, 30%, or more of the overall display. To be able to see the display again, they must move their hand out of the way again. This overall moving of the hand back and forth can lead to reduced user interaction efficiency.
There is thus a need for an improved display device that, when used with touch sensitive displays for example, permits the user to interact with the display with increased user interaction efficiency.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.